creatures,--suns, worlds, moons, the whole visible cosmos,--are
transitory phenomena.... Assuming, with Herbert Spencer, that the
test of reality is permanence, one can scarcely question this
position; it differs little from the statement with which the closing
chapter of the First Principles concludes:--
"Though the relation of subject and object renders necessary to us
these antithetical conceptions of Spirit and Matter, the one is no
less than the other to be regarded as but a sign of the Unknown
Reality which underlies both."--Edition of 1894.
For Buddhism the sole reality is the Absolute,--Buddha as
unconditioned and Infinite Being. There is no other veritable
existence, whether of Matter or of Mind; there is no real
individuality or personality; the "I" and the "Not-I" are essentially
nowise different. We are reminded of Mr. Spencer's position, that "it
is one and the same Reality which is manifested to us both
subjectively and objectively." Mr. Spencer goes on to say: "Subject
and Object, as actually existing, can never be contained in the
consciousness produced by the cooperation of the two, though they are
necessarily [213] implied by it; and the antithesis of Subject and
Object, never to be transcended while consciousness lasts, renders
impossible all knowledge of that Ultimate Reality in which Subject
and Object are united."... I do not think that a master of the higher
Buddhism would dispute Mr. Spencer's doctrine of Transfigured
Realism. Buddhism does not deny the actuality of phenomena as
phenomena, but denies their permanence, and the truth of the
appearances which they present to our imperfect senses. Being
transitory, and not what they seem, they are to be considered in the
nature of illusions,--impermanent manifestations of the only
permanent Reality. But the Buddhist position is not agnosticism: it
is astonishingly different, as we shall presently see. Mr. Spencer
states that we cannot know the Reality so long as consciousness
lasts,--because while consciousness lasts we cannot transcend the
antithesis of Object and Subject, and it is this very antithesis
which makes consciousness possible. "Very true," the Buddhist
metaphysician would reply; "we cannot know the sole Reality while
consciousness lasts. But destroy consciousness, and the Reality
becomes cognizable. Annihilate the illusion of Mind, and the light
will come." This destruction of consciousness signifies Nirvana,--the
extinction of all that we call Self. Self is blindness: destroy it,
and the Reality will be revealed as infinite vision and infinite
peace.
[214] We have now to ask what, according to Buddhist philosophy, is
the meaning of the visible universe as phenomenon, and the nature of
the consciousness that perceives. However transitory, the phenomenon
makes an impression upon consciousness; and consciousness itself,
though transitory, has existence; and its perceptions, however
delusive, are perceptions of actual relation. Buddhism answers that
both the universe and the consciousness are merely aggregates of
Karma--complexities incalculable of conditions shaped by acts and
thoughts through some enormous past. All substance and all
conditioned mind (as distinguished from unconditioned mind) are
products of acts and thoughts: by acts and thoughts the atoms of
bodies have been integrated; and the affinities of those atoms--the
polarities of them, as a scientist might say--represent tendencies
shaped in countless vanished lives. I may quote here from a modern
Japanese treatise on the subject:--
"The aggregate actions of all sentient beings give birth to the
varieties of mountains, rivers, countries, etc. They are caused by
aggregate actions, and so are called aggregate fruits. Our present
life is the reflection of past actions. Men consider these
reflections as their real selves. Their eyes, noses, ears, tongues,
and bodies--as well as their gardens, woods, farms, residences,
servants, and maids--men imagine to be their own possessions; but, in
fact, they are only results endlessly produced by innumerable [215]
actions. In tracing every thing back to the ultimate limits of the
past, we cannot find a beginning: hence it is said that death and
birth have no beginning. Again, when seeking the ultimate limit of
the future, we cannot find the end."* [*Outlines of the Maheyena
Philosophy, by S. Kuroda.]
This teaching that all things are formed by Karma--whatever is good
in the universe representing the results of meritorious acts or
thoughts; and what ever is evil, the results of evil acts or
thoughts--has the approval of five of the great sects; and we may
accept it as a leading doctrine of Japanese Buddhism.... The cosmos
is, then, an aggregate of Karma; and the mind of man is an aggregate
of Karma; and the beginnings thereof are unknown, and the end cannot
be imagined. There is a spiritual evolution, of which the goal is
Nirvana; but we have no declaration as to a final state of universal
rest, when the shaping of substance and of mind will have ceased
forever.... Now the Synthetic Philosophy assumes a very similar
position as regards the evolution of Phenomena: there is no beginning
to evolution, nor any conceivable end. I quote from Mr. Spencer's
reply to a critic in the North American Review:
"That 'absolute commencement of organic life upon the globe,' which
the reviewer says I 'cannot evade the admission of,' I distinctly
deny. The affirmation of [216] universal evolution is in itself the
negation of an absolute commencement of anything. Construed in terms
of evolution, every kind of being is conceived as a product of
modification wrought by insensible gradations upon a preexisting kind
of being; and this holds as fully of the supposed 'commencement of
organic life' as of all subsequent developments of organic life....
That organic matter was not produced all at once, but was reached
through steps, we are well warranted in believing by the experiences
of chemists."* ... [*Principles of Biology, Vol. I, p. 482.]
Of course it should be understood that the Buddhist silence, as to a
beginning and an end, concerns only the production of phenomena, not
any particular existence of groups of phenomena. That of which no
beginning or end can be predicated is simply the Eternal Becoming.
And, like the older Indian philosophy from which it sprang, Buddhism
teaches the alternate apparition and disparition of universes. At
certain prodigious periods of time, the whole cosmos of "one hundred
thousand times ten millions of worlds" vanishes away,--consumed by
fire or otherwise destroyed,--but only to be reformed again. These
periods are called "World-Cycles," and each World-Cycle is divided
into four "Immensities,"--but we need not here consider the details
of the doctrine. It is only the fundamental idea of a evolutional
rhythm that is really interesting. I need scarcely remind the reader
that [217] the alternate disintegration and reintegration of the
cosmos is also a scientific conception, and a commonly accepted
article of evolutional belief. I may quote, however, for other
reasons, the paragraph expressing Herbert Spencer's views upon the
subject:--
"Apparently the universally coexistent forces of attraction and
repulsion, which, as we have seen, necessitate rhythm in all minor
changes throughout the Universe, also necessitate rhythm in the
totality of changes,--produce now an immeasurable period during which
the attractive forces, predominating, cause universal concentration;
and then an immeasurable period during which the repulsive forces,
predominating, cause diffusion,--alternate eras of Evolution and
Dissolution. And thus there is suggested to us the conception of a
past during which there have been successive Evolutions analogous to
that which is now going on; and a future during which successive
other such Evolutions may go on-ever the same in principle, but never
the same in concrete result."--First Principles, Section 183*
[*This paragraph, from the fourth edition, has been considerably
qualified in the definitive edition of 1900.]
Further on, Mr. Spencer has pointed out the vast logical consequence
involved by this hypothesis:--
"If, as we saw reason to think, there is an alternation of Evolution
and Dissolution in the totality of things,--if, as we are obliged to
infer from the Persistence of Force, the arrival at either limit of
this vast rhythm brings about the conditions under which a
counter-movement commences, [218]--if we are hence compelled to
entertain the conception of Evolutions that have filled an
immeasurable past, and Evolutions that will fill an immeasurable
future,--we can no longer contemplate the visible creation as having
a definite beginning or end, or as being isolated. It becomes unified
with all existence before and after; and the Force which the Universe
presents falls into the same category with its Space and Time as
admitting of no limitation in thought."*--First Principles, Section
190.
[*Condensed and somewhat modified in the definitive edition of 1900;
but, for present purposes of illustration, the text of the fourth
edition has been preferred.]
The foregoing Buddhist positions sufficiently imply that the human
consciousness is but a temporary aggregate,--not an eternal entity.
There is no permanent self: there is but one eternal principle in all
life,--the supreme Buddha. Modern Japanese call this Absolute the
"Essence of Mind." "The fire fed by faggots," writes one of these,
"dies when the faggots have been consumed; but the essence of fire is
never destroyed.... All things in the Universe are Mind." So stated,
the position is unscientific; but as for the conclusion reached, we
may remember that Mr. Wallace has stated almost exactly the same
thing, and that there are not a few modern preachers of the doctrine
of a "universe of mind-stuff." The hypothesis is "unthinkable." But
the most serious thinker will agree with the Buddhist assertion that
the relation of all phenomena to the unknowable is merely that of
waves to sea. "Every [219] feeling and thought being but transitory,"
says Mr. Spencer, "an entire life made up of such feelings and
thoughts being but transitory,--nay, the objects amid which life is
passed, though less transitory, being severally in course of losing
their individualities quickly or slowly,--we learn that the one thing
permanent is the Unknown Reality hidden under all these changing
shapes." Here the English and the Buddhist philosophers are in
accord; but thereafter they suddenly part company. For Buddhism is
not agnosticism, but gnosticism, and professes to know the
unknowable. The thinker of Mr. Spencer's school cannot make
assumptions as to the nature of the sole Reality, nor as to the
reason of its manifestations. He must confess himself intellectually
incapable of comprehending the nature of force, matter, or motion. He
feels justified in accepting the hypothesis that all known elements
have been evolved from one primordial undifferentiated
substance,--the chemical evidence for this hypothesis being very
strong. But he certainly would not call that primordial substance a
substance of mind, nor attempt to explain the character of the forces
that effected its integration. Again, though Mr. Spencer would
probably acknowledge that we know of matter only as an aggregate of
forces, and of atoms only as force-centres, or knots of force, he
would not declare that an atom is a force-centre, and nothing
else.... But we find evolutionists [220] of the German school taking
a position very similar to the Buddhist position,--which implies a
universal sentiency, or, more strictly speaking, a universal
potential-sentiency. Haeckel and other German monists assume such a
condition for all substance. They are not agnostics, therefore, but
gnostics; and their gnosticism very much resembles that of the higher
Buddhism.
According to Buddhism there is no reality save Buddha: all things
else are but Karma. There is but one Life, one Self: human
individuality and personality are but phenomenal conditions of that
Self, Matter is Karma; Mind is Karma--that is to say, mind as we know
it: Karma, as visibility, represents to us mass and quality; Karma,
as mentality, signifies character and tendency. The primordial
substance--corresponding to the "protyle" of our Monists--is composed
of Five Elements, which are mystically identified with Five Buddhas,
all of whom are really but different modes of the One. With this idea
of a primordial substance there is necessarily associated the idea of
a universal sentiency. Matter is alive.
Now to the German monists also matter is alive. On the phenomena of
cell-physiology, Haeckel claims to base his conviction that "even the
atom is not without rudimentary form of sensation and will,--or, as
it is better expressed, of feeling (aesthesis), and of inclination
(tropesis),--that is to [221] say, a universal soul of the simplest
kind." I may quote also from Haeckel's Riddle of the Universe the
following paragraph expressing the monistic notion of substance as
held by Vogt and others:--
"The two fundamental forms of substance, ponderable matter and ether,
are not dead and only moved by extrinsic force; but they are endowed
with sensation and will (though, naturally, of the lowest grade);
they experience an inclination for condensation, a dislike of strain;
they strive after the one, and struggle against the other."
Less like a revival of the dreams of the Alchemists is the very
probable hypothesis of Schneider, that sentiency begins with the
formation of certain combinations,--that feeling is evolved from the
non-feeling just as organic being has been evolved from inorganic
substance. But all these monist ideas enter into surprising
combination with the Buddhist teaching about matter as integrated
Karma; and for that reason they are well worth citing in this
relation. To Buddhist conception all matter is sentient,--the
sentiency varying according to condition: "even rocks and stones," a
Japanese Buddhist text declares, "can worship Buddha." In the German
monism of Professor Haeckel's school, the particular qualities and
affinities of the atom represent feeling and inclination, "a soul of
the simplest kind"; in Buddhism these qualities are made by [222]
Karma,--that is to say, they represent tendencies formed in previous
states of existence. The hypotheses appear to be very similar. But
there is only immense, all-important difference, between the
Occidental and the Oriental monism. The former would attribute the
qualities of the atom merely to a sort of heredity,--to the
persistency of tendencies developed under chance--influences
operating throughout an incalculable past. The latter declares the
history of the atom to be purely moral! All matter, according to
Buddhism, represents aggregated sentiency, making, by its inherent
tendencies, toward conditions of pain or pleasure, evil or good.
"Pure actions," writes the author of Outlines of the Maheyena
Philosophy, "bring forth the Pure Lands of all the quarters of the
universe; while impure deeds produce the Impure Lands." That is to
say, the matter integrated by the force of moral acts goes to the
making of blissful worlds; and the matter formed by the force of
immoral acts goes to the making of miserable worlds. All substance,
like all mind, has its Karma; planets, like men, are shaped by the
creative power of acts and thoughts; and every atom goes to its
appointed place, sooner or later, according to the moral or immoral
quality of the tendencies that inform it. Your good or bad thought or
deed will not only affect your next rebirth, but will likewise affect
in some sort the nature of worlds yet unevolved, wherein, after
innumerable cycles, [223] you may have to live again. Of course, this
tremendous idea has no counterpart in modern evolutional philosophy.
Mr. Spencer's position is well known; but I must quote him for the
purpose of emphasizing the contrast between Buddhist and scientific
thought:--
"...We have no ethics of nebular condensation, or of sidereal
movement, or of planetary evolution; the conception is not relevant
to inorganic matter. Nor, when we turn to organized things, do we
find that it has any relation to the phenomena of plant-life; though
we ascribe to plants superiorities and inferiorities, leading to
successes and failures in the struggle for existence, we do not
associate with them praise or blame. It is only with the rise of
sentiency in the animal world that the subject-matter of ethics
originates."--Principles of Ethics, Vol. II, Section 326.
On the contrary, it will be seen, Buddhism actually teaches what we
may call, to borrow Mr. Spencer's phrase, "the ethics of nebular
condensation,"--though to Buddhist astronomy, the scientific meaning
of the term "nebular condensation" was never known. Of course the
hypothesis is beyond the power of human intelligence to prove or to
disprove. But it is interesting, for it proclaims a purely moral
order of the cosmos, and attaches almost infinite consequence to the
least of human acts. Had the old Buddhist metaphysicians been
acquainted with the facts of modern chemistry, they [224] might have
applied their doctrine, with appalling success, to the interpretation
of those facts. They might have explained the dance of atoms, the
affinities of molecules, the vibrations of ether, in the most
fascinating and terrifying way by their theory of Karma.... Here is a
universe of suggestion,--most weird suggestion--for anybody able and
willing to dare the experiment of making a new religion, or at least
a new and tremendous system of Alchemy, based upon the notion of a
moral order in the inorganic world!
But the metaphysics of Karma in the higher Buddhism include much that
is harder to understand than any alchemical hypothesis of
atom-combinations. As taught by popular Buddhism, the doctrine of
rebirth is simple enough,--signifying no more than transmigration:
you have lived millions of times in the past, and you are likely to
live again millions of times in the future,--all the conditions of
each rebirth depending upon past conduct. The common notion is that
after a certain period of bodiless sojourn in this world, the spirit
is guided somehow to the place of its next incarnation. The people,
of course, believe in souls. But there is nothing of all this in the
higher doctrine, which denies transmigration, denies the existence of
the soul, denies personality. There is no Self to be reborn; there is
no transmigration--and yet there [225] is rebirth! There is no real
"I" that suffers or is glad--and yet there is new suffering to be
borne or new happiness to be gained! What we call the Self,--the
personal consciousness,--dissolves at the death of the body; but the
Karma, formed during life, then brings about the integration of a new
body and a new consciousness. You suffer in this existence because of
acts done in a previous existence---yet the author of those acts was
not identical with your present self! Are you, then, responsible for
the faults of another person?
The Buddhist metaphysician would answer thus: "The form of your
question is wrong, because it assumes the existence of
personality,--and there is no personality. There is really no such
individual as the 'you' of the inquiry. The suffering is indeed the
result of errors committed in some anterior existence or existences;
but there is no responsibility for the acts of another person, since
there is no personality. The 'I' that was and the 'I' that is
represent in the chain of transitory being aggregations momentarily
created by acts and thoughts; and the pain belongs to the aggregates
as condition resulting from quality." All this sounds extremely
obscure: to understand the real theory we must put away the notion of
personality, which is a very difficult thing to do. Successive births
do not mean transmigration in the common sense of that word, but only
the self-propagation of [226] Karma: the perpetual multiplying of
certain conditions by a kind of ghostly gemmation,--if I may borrow a
biological term. The Buddhist illustration, however, is that of flame
communicated from one lamp-wick to another: a hundred lamps may thus
be lighted from one flame, and the hundred flames will all be
different, though the origin of all was the same. Within the hollow
flame of each transitory life is enclosed a part of the only Reality;
but this is not a soul that transmigrates. Nothing passes from birth
to birth but Karma,--character or condition.
One will naturally ask how can such a doctrine exert any moral
influence whatever? If the future being shaped by my Karma is to be
in nowise identical with my present self,--if the future
consciousness evolved by my Karma is to be essentially another
consciousness,--how can I force myself to feel anxious about the
sufferings of that unborn person? "Again your question is wrong," a
Buddhist would answer: "to understand the doctrine you must get rid
of the notion of individuality, and think, not of persons, but of
successive states of feeling and consciousness, each of which buds
out of the other,--a chain of existences interdependently united."
... I may attempt another illustration. Every individual, as we
understand the term, is continually changing. All the structures of
the body are constantly undergoing waste and repair; and the [227]
body that you have at this hour is not, as to substance, the same
body that you had ten years ago. Physically you are not the same
person: yet you suffer the same pains, and feel the same pleasures,
and find your powers limited by the same conditions. Whatever
disintegrations and reconstructions of tissue have taken place within
you, you have the same physical and mental peculiarities that you had
ten years ago. Doubtless the cells of your brain have been decomposed
and recomposed: yet you experience the same emotions, recall the same
memories, and think the same thoughts. Everywhere the fresh substance
has assumed the qualities and tendencies of the substance replaced.
This persistence of condition is like Karma. The transmission of
tendency remains, though the aggregate is changed....
These few glimpses into the fantastic world, of Buddhist metaphysics
will suffice, I trust, to convince any intelligent reader that the
higher Buddhism (to which belongs the much-discussed and
little-comprehended doctrine of Nirvana) could never have been the
religion of millions almost incapable of forming abstract ideas,--the
religion of a population even yet in a comparatively early stage of
religious evolution. It was never understood by the people at all,
nor is it ever taught to them to-day. It is a religion of
metaphysicians, a [228] religion of scholars, a religion so difficult
to be understood, even by persons of some philosophical training,
that it might well be mistaken for a system of universal negation.
Yet the reader should now be able to perceive that, because a man
disbelieves in a personal God, in an immortal soul, and in any
continuation of personality after death, it does not follow that we
are justified in declaring him an irreligious Person,--especially if
he happen to be an Oriental. The Japanese scholar who believes in the
moral order of the universe, the ethical responsibility of the
present to all the future, the immeasurable consequence of every
thought and deed, the ultimate disparition of evil, and the power of
attainment to conditions of infinite memory and infinite
vision,--cannot be termed either an atheist or a materialist, except
by bigotry and ignorance. Profound as may be the difference between
his religion and our own, in respect of symbols and modes of thought,
the moral conclusions reached in either case are very much the same.
[229]
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